Stockholm Syndrome
by InuKoishii
Summary: How can I love you? You're the enemy. You stuck me in this filthy cell. So someone tell me why. Why does my stomach flutter when you look at me? Why does my heart lighten when you smile? Someone, please...tell me why.
1. Prologue: The Fire

**A/N**: New story! I'm studying this in class now and it's really amazingly interesting. In a masochistic way, I suppose. **If you don't know, Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological response seen mostly in hostages or other prisoners. The captured prisoners form a bond with their captor, and if they are rescued, might refuse to leave and show loyalty to the captor. **If that wasn't clear enough, search the Internet.

* * *

Blood. Blood everywhere. Was it hers? Was it her family's? Where was her brother? Her mother? Her grandfather?

"Mama?" she whispered. Her words were stolen from her lips by the roaring fire, the dry air causing her to cough. Her line of vision wavered, and she saw small pinpricks of darkness creeping into the corners of her sight.

"Bro?" she cried. "Grandpa! Anyone!" Slowly, she crawled around on her hands and knees, remembering to stay low to the ground.

Ashes. Ashes everywhere. She struggled to recall what had happened. She remembered coming home from school. She remembered opening the door. She remembered... she remembered her mother running towards her, frantically pushing her out the door. She remembered someone screaming 'Go!' She remembered her little brother, wrapping his arms around her in a giant hug, staring up at her with his soft brown eyes. Goodbye eyes. Farewell eyes. Adieu eyes. She remembered an explosion, and yells, and Grandpa...

She choked, nearly retching, doubled over in pain. Oh gods. He was dead. She remembered seeing his face, so strangely peaceful, clouded gray eyes staring up at her. He had whispered a few traditional blessings of death to her. She had screamed. He had fell.

'_What else?_'she frantically thought to herself. '_What about Mama and Bro? Where are they?_ _Dead too? Or still alive, somewhere in this heap of rubble and ash and blood?_'Struggling to remember, she wandered around, crawling like a lizard towards anyone. Anything.

She bumped into a hard object. Rearing back, she cried out. When the shape didn't stir, she leaned forward, examining it.

This time she did vomit. Averting her head, she let out her pain in her puke. It was her mother and her brother. Her mother had her arms wrapped around him, protecting him, sheltering him. It had not worked. They were both unmistakably dead.

So this was it. She was the last of the family. Slowly, the traumatized girl doubled over into a fetal position, reeking of smoke and vomit and death. And that was how they found her, half-dead, five hours later, with her body curled into a circle, hair splayed around her, and her socks still on.

* * *

**My mom hates it when I put on socks and go to sleep. Errr.. I suppose it wasn**'**t too bad. A short and mysterious prologue. Sorry for saying **'**Bro**'** and **'**her brother**'** so much, but I thought it would add to the dramatic effect. :D R&R PLAWKS!**


	2. Strangers

**A/N**: Second chapter! I'm trying to get as many chapters as I can in.

Disclaimer: I don't own Inuyasha or any other name brands mentioned in this story.

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"Gnngnh?" snorted Inuyasha as he was dragged out of his own bed by a burly green toad demon. "What the fuck, Jaken?" (A/N: gigglesnort burly Jaken.)

"Lord Sesshoumaru requests the presence of the filthy half-demon!" the demon squawked in a surprisingly high voice. Inuyasha shook lingering dreams out of his head and stood up, loping out of the small, cramped, red room with Jaken.

"Inuyasha," greeted Sesshoumaru as the young hanyou sauntered into the living room, still wiping sleep dust out of his eyes.

Inuyasha grunted in acknowledgment. "What's so important you woke me up in the middle of the fucking night, Sesshoumaru?" he slurred.

Sesshoumaru merely smirked. "I have another prisoner I need you to, ah, babysit," the demon said, flicking a lock of white hair out of his ice-cold, golden eyes.

Inuyasha rolled his own pair of seductive amber orbs. "Fluffy, I didn't think you would give me the pleasure of guarding a prisoner since Kikyou happened," he said sarcastically, carefully masking his feelings from that particular incident.

Sesshoumaru sighed dramatically. "Be that as it may, none of my other _subjects_ are willing to get close to a human. I thought you might be able to relate to her. After all, you are half-human."Here he threw in a sneer at Inuyasha, causing the fur on the hanyou's ears to bristle.

Then Sesshoumaru smiled disarmingly, throwing Inuyasha off-guard. "As soon as I saw the girl, I knew you would like her. The gods have given you a second chance, Inuyasha."

Inuyasha growled. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Sesshoumaru only smirked patiently. "This girl looks uncannily like Kikyou." He watched Inuyasha's eyes widen a fraction of a fraction, watched his eyebrows rise, watched his jaw slacken.

And then the hanyou tensed up again. "Is this your idea of a _joke_, O Great Ruler of Stick-Up-His-Ass-ness?" Inuyasha growled. "Are you perhaps trying to taunt me with some sick semblance of humor?"

Sesshoumaru merely yawned, already bored with the conversation. "Go see for yourself, halfling," he purred. "I need some sleep to catch up on after a night of glorious burning and pillaging." The demon settled his furry mokomoko around his shoulder and slid further down the couch, turning his head away from Inuyasha and closing his eyes.

Jaken hurriedly marched back into the room, having slid unnoticed into the kitchen during the conversation. "You heard what Lord Sesshoumaru said!" screeched the brawny demon, munching on what appeared to be potato chips. "Attend to the lady downstairs."

Inuyasha grumbled, whirling around and heading for the basement stairs, grabbing the bag of chips out of Jaken's hands while doing so.

* * *

The Takahashi mansion was a grand one, but underneath the seemingly elegant house was a dank, dark, and rather unpleasant basement. Of course, many basements have these distasteful qualities, but the Takahashi basement most likely beat them all. Underneath the dazzling architecture and the formidable turrets lay one(1).

Extremely.

Large.

Torture.

Chamber.

The chamber had a handy mini-refrigerator, a stylishly modern couch, and a plasma screen TV too, but rest assured, these were only for the uses of the captor.

The room was designed medieval-style, with racks and head-crushers and saws, as well as stakes, whips, and crocodile tubes, which were used to trap prisoners with teeth-like spikes. Some of the devices were rather kinky, and Inuyasha strongly suspected that Sesshoumaru, in his younger, wilder days, had banged a few women on them.

Entering the basement, Inuyasha's sensitive ears picked up the sound of light, feminine snoring. '_Well, that's hardly Kikyou's style,_' he thought. '_She seemed too perfect to snore. I hardly even saw her sleep._' Advancing towards one of the cells, he saw a distinctively feminine figure leaning against the wall of one of the cells.

As he got closer, he recognized the similarities between this girl and Kikyou. '_Psh,_' he thought to himself. '_They don't look that alike. Sesshoumaru's just trying to play tricks on my mind. Maybe the same hair color and the same eyes, but her hair's wavy while Kikyou's was straight, and her eyes...I wonder what color her eyes are. Maybe I should wake her up._' He smirked at the thought of this, and leaned over to shake her awake.

He jumped slightly when the human girl stirred, opening her mouth in a large yawn that revealed straight white teeth and stretching like a cat against the wall. Inuyasha eyed her curvy body and grinned lasciviously. If he had to be stuck with a prisoner, at least it was a sexy one. The girl opened her eyes, answering Inuyasha's previous question. In place of Kikyou's icy blue eyes so much like Sesshoumaru's stood a pair of warm pools of chocolate. Mesmerized by her eyes, Inuyasha stood rooted to the spot, all thoughts having _whooshed_ out of his head, simply marveling at her sparkling brown doe eyes. He wondered if she knew that her entire family had been killed. That would extinguish the spark pretty quickly.

The girl turned toward him, eyes widening and plump pink lips parting in a silent scream. Quickly, she crab-walked to the back of the cell, staring at him in fear.

* * *

'_Who the hell is this guy?_' Kagome wondered, glaring at the stranger. She gave him a once-over, analyzing his scruffy t-shirt and boxers. Her gaze moved up from his body to his eyes, and immediately felt like melting. The intense saffron orbs stared back, obviously startled. His hand reached out to hers, but she shook her head.

"C'mon," he whispered gently. "Don't be scared. Inu's not gonna hurt you." Kagome snorted at the nickname the hanyou (for it was a hanyou, she had recognized from his fuzzy dog ears) had given himself.

"My family just got burned down, probably by you, and you want me to take your hand?" the girl spoke. "As if, fucker.''

* * *

Inuyasha raised his eyebrows. '_Ooh. Definitely not a Kikyou. Feisty girl, ain't she?_' He grinned. She might be interesting to play with.

But then he saw her trembling, pouty lips. He saw that her auburn eyes were quickly glassing over with unshed tears. He saw that she was afraid.

Normally, Inuyasha wouldn't have cared. Even with Kikyou, he had never been very sentimental, fooling himself into thinking that she was _the one_ just because she was actually one of the few people who had shown him attention. But staring into the girl's buttery brown eyes, he felt something turn in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps it was shame. Perhaps it was guilt. Or perhaps it was just the fact that he had eaten nothing for dinner. Either way, he felt the sudden need to protect her.

Unlocking and opening the door, he took the shivering girl into his arms and sat on the floor of the cell. Silently, she shifted so that she was in a more comfortable position, and wrapped her arms around his. No words needed to be spoken, no names exchanged. They were just strangers, sharing a blissful moment of comfort.

* * *

**A/N**: Quickie chapter. R&R?


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